The seemingly endless death spiral finally landed MGM in Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday. The silver lining here, of course, is that we can now get on with the business of watching James Bond save the world.

For those who really care about the legalese, inside-baseball and tedious wonkery, you can read the details over at Bloomberg, but what matters to movie fans is that MGM plans to have the next Bond film in theaters by Nov. 2012, with another coming every other year afterward.

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Presumably, Daniel Craig will find time to return to the fold, but who will direct is up in the air. Sam Mendes was on board for a while, but with all the delays it's unclear what his status is. Chirs Nolan earlier this year said he'd "love to do a Bond" film, a job for which "Inception" showed he was more than qualified.

And of course the studio's other big franchise, "The Hobbit," is already moving forward, with its own unique financial and labor issues more or less under control.